Saturdays in the South

Please welcome Dr. Richard Mabry, author of the medical suspense novel, Lethal Remedy! SATURDAYS IN THE SOUTH Saturdays in the south—wow, that phrase conjures up a delightful picture: sleeping late, enjoying a leisurely breakfast, reading or catching a movie. For some people, maybe that’s accurate. For others, Saturday means shuttling kids to soccer games, attacking a bunch of “honey-do” chores, and in general trying to whittle down a list of things that need to be accomplished—but probably won’t. There’s a special group for which Saturdays are just another day (even in the south), as are Sundays and holidays. High on this list are health care workers, a profession I was privileged to practice for many years. It’s a demanding life, but an important one. That’s why the dedication of one of my novels of medical suspense reads this way: This book is dedicated to that special group of health care workers who perform their healing labors as a true ministry. It was an honor to work alongside you for over four decades. Is there anything unique about medical practice in the south? There once was, although it’s becoming less true with the passage of time. When I completed my specialty training and contemplated the location for my medical practice, I was told by an elder statesman of the profession to confine my choices to the south. When I asked why, his answer was succinct, but I found it to be good advice: “The further north you go, the faster the dance.” So I chose to practice in a suburban community in Texas, and wasn’t disappointed. I watched my sons play baseball and swim, saw all the speech events in which my daughter participated. It took some doing, but I managed not to dance so fast that I missed these important…

Please welcome author Robin Caroll to the blog today! She is the author of Injustice For All, just released in January. She's posting about something near and dear to Southern hearts--food! As a southern lady, food is very vital to me. It's part of who we are in the South, as well as the preparation of meals is a time for family. To this day, my sisters, mother and I often find all of us in the kitchen cooking together for the family whenever we're all together. Here's a favorite recipe of mine. It's my husband's chicken and dumplings recipe, and we love it! Casey’s Chicken & Dumplings 1 cup chopped celery 1 cup chopped onion whole chicken with skin, quartered ½ stick real butter 2 cloves garlic, crushed 2 tablespoons Worchestershire sauce ¼ teaspoon Tabasco 2 cans of ready-to-bake biscuits Sauté onions, garlic, and celery in the butter until onions are translucent. Add quartered chicken and sear. Add approximately 5 cups of water and bring to a boil. Keep at boiling for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Remove chicken and debone, then remove the skin. Return chicken to water/celery/onion mix. Add Worchestershire sauce and Tabasco. Simmer 35 minutes. Slowly and gradually drop in biscuits—each quartered. Simmer 20 minutes. A federal judge lies bleeding on his office floor, betrayed by a most unlikely source—people who helped him bring criminals to justice. Now, why would someone working for the FBI need to disappear after witnessing this crime? When Remington Wyatt sees her godfather’s murder, she recognizes the killers and knows it’s only a matter of time before they come to silence her. She must do the only thing possible to stay alive . . . run. FBI agent Rafe Baxter is serious about his career, and solving a cold case involving…

Please welcome author Michael Hervey to the blog today! His first novel, Soundkeeper, is currently available for Kindle. It will be available as a nook- and iBook by the end of March, and in paperback by the end of April. “They went back outside and Silas locked up the office. Persimmon clouds with cinnamon edges seemed reluctant to surrender to the twilight. The beauty of the sunset was too sensational to rush past, even as hungry and tired as he was. While Hall loitered on the dock, he wondered if the display was a salute from God, a final tribute to someone who cherished His creation and looked after it so well.” We don’t always get to choose where we live. Careers, family, and dozens of other factors come into play when we choose where we will spend our lives. As a writer, however, I am not limited by such practical constraints. The characters I bring to life are free to live and play wherever I want them to, perhaps in places I wouldn’t mind living. My home is in the Piedmont of North Carolina, in beautiful green and rolling countryside a short drive from the coast. But in Soundkeeper, my characters get to breathe in the heavy smell of the salt marsh every day and experience sunsets each evening that are more entertaining than anything man will ever create. Is it a good thing for an author to be jealous of their characters? I’ve been fortunate to spend a lot of time in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, where Soundkeeper is set, but I’ve always dreamed of living there. A place where I know the tides better than the TV schedule, and seclusion and adventure await beyond my dock. Flip-flops and khaki shorts would be my new uniform, and…

Please join me in welcoming Melinda McGuire, author of Josephine: Red Dirt and Whiskey, to the blog today! I have been so anxious to share her guest post with you! She made me "homesick," for lack of a better word, for my younger days and endless, hot Saturdays. I’m not usually a person who lives in the realm of literal thinking, but when I ventured over to The Introverted Reader and saw the title “Saturdays in the South,” I immediately wanted to be a part of it because I love Saturdays in the South - truly, the real Saturdays. Saturdays in the South are hot cups of steaming coffee and plates of pancakes with homemade maple syrup. Saturdays in the South are music in the morning, reading in the afternoons and **moon pie faces** and romance in the evenings. Saturdays in the South are warm, clean sheets out of the dryer, the smell of chili or pinto beans simmering on the stove all day long and a cast iron skillet of cornbread baking in the oven. Saturdays in the South are seeing your plain old house made clean and new again from Pine Sol, baking soda and some elbow grease. Saturdays in the South are old country songs on the radio that you have to adjust your stereo antenna just the right way to pick up. Or, if you’re super lucky, scratchy vinyl records all morning long and singing along with Patsy, Willie, Waylon, Hank and Dolly. Saturdays in the South are ironing clothes in the morning that you are going to wear out Saturday night and the smell of starch and steam. Saturdays in the South are trips to the beauty salon with your grandma so she can get her hair washed and curled and her nails painted Pale…

Please welcome Taylor M. Polites, author of The Rebel Wife, which was just released on Tuesday! One piece of Huntsville, Alabama that I have always carried with me is the beautiful, antebellum [...]

Today, please welcome author Susan Kelly to The Introverted Reader. She's a fellow North Carolinian! As a senior in boarding school, in the very Southern city of Richmond, Virginia, I took a course titled “Southern Fiction,” and, as my teacher later described it, “fell into a hole,” which she intended as a high compliment. The hole wasn’t The Confessions of Nat Turner, but Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! I can still quote chunks of it. Two decades later, my own Southern fiction was being published. What makes fiction Southern? Is it references to grits and K-Marts and “mama’n’em,” what I like to term red clay realism? Am I a Southern author because I wrote in How Close We Come, that “the discarded Christmas trees in the curb look like tipped over Southern belles, upended, with their underwear and petticoats showing”? An audience member once told me she was certain I was Midwestern, because my characters are candid, if not downright blunt. (If Midwesterners are blunt, that was news to me.) Al Hirschfield, the pen-and-ink illustrator, famously includes his daughter’s name, Nina, in every drawing he creates. You have to search for it within his strokes. In each of my novels, I’ve included the phrase “necessary sadness,” and for me, that’s the essence of Southern fiction. How to define “necessary sadness”? Well, it’s a bit like looking for new wallpaper: you might not be able to describe it, but you’ll know it when you see it. Necessary sadness is the current of bittersweet, of rue, if you will, that runs through our lives. It’s about letting go while holding fast. Knowing what to keep from something—a memory, a death, a way of life, a loss of innocence – and knowing what must be yielded to, or discarded. Think of To Kill A Mockingbird,…

Today I welcome Kathryn Lively, author of Little Flowers, to the blog for the first post in my new Saturdays in the South feature! Hello, and thank you for joining me today. My name is Kathryn Lively and I guess you can say I am a Southerner. I have lived in the South all of my life - born in Florida, present in Virginia after several years in Georgia. As an English major in college and assistant librarian in Georgia, I became exposed to some of the best Southern literature written. While I read pretty much everything, there is a special place in my heart for the classics: McCullers, Welty, Faulkner, Harper Lee, etc. My first love genre, however, is mystery, and I've spent many years tearing through all manner of Southern stories, from the gothic to the genteel to the downright bizarre. Anne Rice and Carl Hiaasen were two early favorites, and one would think I'd end up emulating the styles of some of these writers. In truth, when I sat down to write my first novel, Little Flowers, I decided to work on my own voice rather than attempt a poor imitation of another's. I feel when an author is able to do that, the actual writing comes easier, and the passion for the story is evident in the final product. I've been flattered over the years to receive notes from aspiring authors requesting tips. Bottom line, if you want to write, you simply do it. If you have time to cook dinner, exercise, work, etc., you have the time to write. You don't have to complete the entire novel in a day, but even a thousand words a day puts you a step closer to your goals. Getting back to Little Flowers, this was a project I…